What the Pioneer Woman taught me about green beans

I have a bit of a confession to make. Depending on who you are and what circles you run in, this may not be very earth shattering, but I think it will at least be a surprise to my blogger friends. Here goes--I had never read The Pioneer Woman blog before today. Nor have I seen her show or ever flipped through one of her cookbooks. Whew! It feels good to get that off of my chest. I should say, I have nothing against Ree Drummond. In fact, now that I've been initiated, I'm sure I will inevitably get hooked on her brand of tell-it-like-it-is-y'all blogging and down-home, made-from-scratch cooking. Who am I kidding? The woman uses cast iron and taught me that you don't have to snap both ends off of your green beans, I am already hooked.

Speaking of those green beans, I riffed on her Fresh Green Beans recipe for dinner tonight and it was super delicious. I had already removed both ends (oh snap!), but I bought some of my time back by blanching them before throwing them in the skillet. I'm sure it won't surprise anyone that I decided to forgo her suggestion to use bacon grease instead of oil and butter. I also left out the red bell pepper since I didn't have it, and while I had onion, I decided to go ahead and use the leeks I had already chopped for another recipe.

Full disclosure, I did *almost* get to meet Ree Drummond last November. My first outing away from the young master Gray was to a blogger event that was centered around The Pioneer Woman's visit to Rogers, AR. We got together the night before her book signing to hang out and eat yummy food prepared from the recipes in her cookbooks. I had planned to go stand in line for her to sign a cookbook along with hundreds of her die-hard fans, but I wasn't able to make it after all.

Are you a Pioneer Woman fan? Either way, you should try the green beans. Am I the only one who didn't know that you only have to snap one end off? On second thought, I may just keep doing it my way. Besides sorting dry beans, it's one of the few kitchen tasks I can do sitting down.